Methods for producing recombinant proteins are well known in the art; heterologous DNA segments that encode for a particular protein are inserted into host microorganisms using recombinant DNA technology. By growing the transformant microorganisms under conditions which induce the expression of proteins, heterologous proteins such as insulin, somatotropins, interleukins, interferons, somatomedins, and the like can be produced.
Unfortunately, heterologous proteins produced by transformant microorganisms are frequently not biologically active because they do not fold into the proper tertiary structure when transcribed within the microorganism. The heterologous proteins tend to form aggregates which are recognizable within the cell as "inclusion bodies". These inclusion bodies may also be caused by the formation of covalent intermolecular disulfide bonds which link together several protein molecules to form insoluble complexes. The inclusion bodies generally contain mostly heterologous proteins and a small fraction of contaminating host microorganism proteins.
Several processes have been developed to extract the inclusion bodies from the microorganisms and convert the heterologous proteins contained therein into proteins having native bioactivity consistent with the natural parent or non-recombinant proteins. These processes generally involve disrupting the microorganism cell, separating the inclusion bodies from cell debris, solubilizing the inclusion body proteins in a denaturant/detergent which unfolds the protein, separating the heterologous inclusion body proteins from insoluble contaminants, removing the denaturant/detergent thereby allowing the heterologous proteins to refold into a bioactive tertiary conformation, and separating the protein from the contaminating proteins that remain in solution. Several recombinant protein purification schemes following this general procedure are known in the art: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,511,503 and 4,518,526 to Olson et al and U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,511,502 and 4,620,948 to Builder et al disclose multi-step methods wherein (1) inclusion bodies are solubilized in a strong denaturant and a reducing agent, (2) insoluble contaminants are removed from the solubilized protein solution, (3) the strong denaturant is replaced with a weak denaturant, (4) the protein is allowed to refold assisted by oxidation of the sulfhydryl groups to disulfide bonds using molecular oxygen and a catalyst, typically metal cations or sodium tetrathionate and (5) the protein is separated from other contaminating proteins by membrane separation techniques or chromatography procedures. Rausch et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,196, incorporated herein by reference, discloses a particular method for purifying and activating proteins which is a variation of the general scheme described above. The method comprises solubilizing the inclusion bodies in SDS, removing the excess SDS from the solution using dialysis or other suitable technique, chromatographing the SDS-protein solution on an ion-retardation resin, and chromatographing the resulting solution on an anion-exchange resin to recover the protein. All these known procedures share a common problem. The protein solution produced when the denaturant/detergent is removed contains the recombinant protein, low molecular weight contaminating proteins, non-protein contaminants, and high molecular weight contaminating proteins; the high molecular weight protein contaminants are often mostly dimers, oligomers and aggregates of the recombinant protein but also include non-recombinant proteins from the cell digest. It is often difficult, time consuming and expensive to separate the recombinant protein from these contaminants, particularly the recombinant protein dimers, oligomers and aggregates. Chromatographic and membrane separation techniques may be effective for separating the recombinant proteins from the contaminants but are cumbersome, lengthy, expensive and often give low percentage yields for protein recovery.
New and improved methods for easily, quickly and inexpensively recovering high yields of recombinant proteins from solutions containing high molecular weight protein contaminants are therefore needed.